DaSII is coming out in just a bit over a month now. Many crazy things are now known, many more crazy things to discover I'm sure. I'm not sure what I am most excited for, personally, but the things I find most interesting so far are many of the basic system changed, like the new stat (agility) that reduces action time. The new way back stabs and ripostes work, the fact that guard crush is now just as strong as riposte, making STR characters inherently strong for the first time ever. Stuff like that.

Here's a reminder of the evil one can inflict on their fellow man if they set their mind to it. Ye've a heart of gold. Don't let them take it from you.

tl;dr: things seem pretty much the same with minor alterations, as was to be expected. Lots of information about new mechanics that's interesting but basically useless without context. The big change seems to be that they're making the story a lot more obvious. Lots of cutscenes and dialogue. No seeking out NPCs that you may or may not ever meet and relying on item descriptions for anything beyond the basics.

It's more-or-less been a goal of the new director (Or more accurately Namco) to make DkS2 more user friendly to bring in an overall larger audience. If we're lucky the furthest they take that is easier to find secrets and more obvious narrative.

It looks as if there's also a lot more action-over-caution areas and overall move to make gameplay faster and smoother. Though not nearly as heavily as things looked during original announcements.

I've heard mixed things on the story front. Many things are more obvious, especially initially, but the True Deep Secrets™ are still in NPC dialog and item descriptions. Especially anything that has to do with the connection between the new location and Lordran.

So after almost beating Demon's Souls I can say that I really appreciate Dark Souls a lot. Demon's Souls had a lot of dick bosses that aren't very fun, and the world tendency is kind of butts. Let's make the enemies harder if you suck more yeah sure.

Everyone who says that just doesn't understand how to manipulate world tendency properly. I'm not saying it was good, it kind of wasn't except for the special events at max white and max black, but it only shifts black if you die in body form or kill a body form NPC, with some exceptions. Killing one boss will shift it three points back toward white, while dying in body form will only shift it one point toward black. Running around in body form is stupid for a lot of reasons, so this should never happen on accident. Also, the increased difficulty really only kicks in once it enters black tendency, if it is any shade of white it's still weaker enemies and more healing items, neutral is baseline, and then black is harder enemies and more things like shards and rare weapon drops.

The only thing that makes it kind of inconsistent is that you can be effected by server tendency, which will pull you one way or the other, but that really only matters if you're trying to pure tendency events.

Bal wrote:The only thing that makes it kind of inconsistent is that you can be effected by server tendency, which will pull you one way or the other, but that really only matters if you're trying to pure tendency events.

This is exactly the reason why tendency was pretty awful. You had world tendency and the online mechanic, and could basically choose either one or the other. There was no point in chasing tendency unless you were going for pure world events, and most of the time figuring out what and where they were all maintaining the tendency would be basically impossible without a ton of game experience or a guide. Most people were helplessly fumbling around with the system with no idea.

I'm not saying the idea isn't fun, and certainly fits with the theme. Implication was terrible though.

The main problem is that the system is almost completely opaque, and what you do learn is misleading. Like, Dark Souls doesn't care if you find certain things, like Ash Lake, but Demon's Souls doesn't care if you even understand how really basic shit works at all. World Tendency is obliquely referenced, server tendency not at all, and what it does is totally up to you to discover. The fact that killing yourself in the Nexus is the best thing to do when controlling world tendency is only kind of intuitive because of the massive number of blood stains right by where everyone jumps off.

Also finally beat Dark Souls with Patito and Nodal. I think destroying the game via friend-coop was pretty fun, despite being completely against the spirit of the game. It made Bed of Chaos hilarious instead of frustrating.